Flight number record

UA 253

United Airlines · Houston to Honolulu

Route: IAH → HNL
Departs: 09:35
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 253, check with United Airlines.

UA 253 lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

On time

77.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights

Avg delay

51 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.55%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

4.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Schedule

When UA 253 flies

UA 253 flies IAH to HNL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 09:35, used on 93 of 365 flights, with 10:10 (86 flights) and 09:45 (70 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 09:3593 flights25.5%
Departs 10:1086 flights23.6%
Departs 09:4570 flights19.2%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 09:35 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and UA 253 runs 7 points worse at 77.1%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

UA 253 next to IAH to HNL

Every carrier on IAH to HNL combined arrived on time 77.4% of the time across 369 flights, so UA 253 is about level with it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 2 points.

UA 253 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 253	365	77.1%	51 min	0.55%	B+
All United Airlines on IAH–HNL	369	77.4%	51 min	0.54%	B+
All carriers on IAH–HNL	369	77.4%	51 min	0.54%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 253 quarter by quarter

UA 253 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 88.0% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 65.6%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 91 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights75.0%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights88.0%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights79.8%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights65.6%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 253 ranged from 71.2% on Thursday to 82.7% on Tuesday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 12 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why UA 253 runs late

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 4,221 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
41%
Late-arriving aircraft
26%
National Airspace System
24%
Extreme weather
9%

The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,728 of the 4,221 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,221 delay minutes reported on UA 253.

Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

At 3,904 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

Every one of the 365 flights under UA 253 in the data flew IAH to HNL. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking UA 253

For a booking, read UA 253 as 77.1% on time with 0.55% cancelled over 365 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

Where to go next

A flight number here means United Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures